-----
title: "An IE Lover's Guide to Firefox"
content-type: article
timestamp: 1132940820
tags: "ie|firefox|microsoft|firefox|browsers"
-----
<p>This is an attempt to explain to Internet Explorer users what Mozilla Firefox is, what its features are and how it
    can be enhanced or customized.</p>
<p>Although this article is written primarily for IE users, it will make interesting reading for any Firefox user who
    wants to try to convince even the most hopeless IE fan to adopt Firefox for everyday use.</p>
<h3>My Point of View</h3>
<p>After using Mozilla Firefox for at least 2 years, I must admit two things: I'm biased towards Firefox, and I just
    about forgot what IE is like. When you ask someone who's been using Firefox for a while why he likes it, he would
    probably say something like, "because Firefox is much better than IE." Then he would start boasting about Firefox's
    features, like tabbed browsing, security improvements, popup blocking, extensions and so on, without thinking that
    maybe an accustomed IE user would be overwhelmed by all these new things, and in the end, might become even more
    obstinate in using IE.</p>
<p>From here on, I'll play the part - for teaching purposes only, of course - of an Internet Explorer lover: IE is the
    only browser I've ever tried, and it is the only thing you need to surf the Net. I also talked with some IE users I
    know and I actually opened the browser myself (once again, for teaching purposes), and visited some sites.</p>
<p>Why not have a real IE Lover write this article? Well, I thought about it, actually, and the only answer I could come
    up with was: there's no such thing as an 'IE lover', only a lot of people who are too used to IE to want to switch
    to Firefox. So, I'd better write this all myself; after all, a long time ago, I was just like those people.</p>
<h3>IE: I've used it for years and it does the job</h3>
<p>When I bought my computer from my favourite retailer, I immediately asked him: "Can I go on the Internet with it? Do
    I need to buy any particular program to visit websites?" and I was told that I didn't need anything at all, because
    it was all included in <em>Windows XP</em>. I just had to click on the start button and choose "Internet" from the
    pop-up menu. "Straightforward," I thought. "Anybody can do that!"</p>
<p>I soon noticed that to browse the Internet, Windows used a program called Internet Explorer 6, which was actually
    part of the whole Windows infrastructure, somehow: it's the same thing, more or less, that I use to view directories
    on my hard drive, just online. This is the way it should be - so tightly integrated with the operating system that
    you hardly notice its presence!</p>
<p>After a while, I learned some more about Internet Explorer, and I noticed that a lot of other applications could be
    integrated into it, like download managers and <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html">PDF
        viewers</a>. I also discovered that I could even <a
        href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/default.aspx">listen to music and watch videos</a>
    through my browser, directly from webpages.</p>
<p>Then I discovered toolbars - and I wasn't entirely happy about them. I installed <a
        href="http://toolbar.google.com/index_2">Google Toolbar</a>, and I really enjoyed its features, but I noticed
    that some other toolbars seemed to be installed, even if I didn't want to: I think some other program asked me to
    install them or something; I don't really know. All I do now is just set Internet Explorer not to display them, and
    change my starting page back to what I want, because sometimes, for some reason, IE starts with a different page
    than what I want.</p>
<p>All that aside, what I really like about IE is that I can use it for anything and everything, even updating Windows!
    Microsoft has another cool technology called ActiveX which allows me to download and install Windows security
    patches and upgrades automatically!</p>
<p>I really don't understand how people can run an operating system other than Windows: the Web was
    <strong>made</strong> for Internet Explorer! It's even <a
        href="http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/internetexplorer/internetexplorer.aspx?pid=internetexplorer">available
        for Macintosh</a>.
</p>
<p>A friend of mine told me he started using another browser called "Firefox" or "Firebird" or something, and he really
    likes it! He said it can be used on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris, and Unix, but when I asked him why it was so
    good, he told me, "Because it's better, and IE sucks."</p>
<p>I don't understand how he can say that, especially because everyone I know uses Internet Explorer, Bill Gates made
    loads of money out of it, so it can't be that bad! Anyhow, I decided to give this Fire-thingie a shot.</p>


<h3>Face to Face with a Fox</h3>
<p>My friend told me to download this thing from a <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/">website</a>,
    because it's free. So what? IE is free, too, because it came with my PC. Anyhow, I figured I'd just go and download
    it so he'd leave me alone about it. I read that Firefox - that's its name - is a free browser developed by the <a
        href="http://www.mozilla.org">Mozilla Foundation</a> which has received a lot of <a
        href="http://www.mozilla.org/press/awards.html">awards</a> from various well-known computer-related websites and
    institutions. It also seem to have a promotional <a href="http://www.spreadfirefox.com/">website</a> that says it
    has been downloaded nearly seventy million times! All the geeks seem to use it, and they love it. Maybe it's really
    good, or maybe they just don't like Microsoft.</p>
<p>When I ran Firefox for the first time, Internet Explorer warned me that it couldn't verify the authenticity of the
    download, or something like that, but it says that all the time when I download stuff.</p>
<p>The first thing that happened was that I was prompted to import my favourites from Internet Explorer. Great! I didn't
    want to lose all the sites I have had bookmarked for years. So far, so good.</p>
<p>There were no XP-related icons at all, just some weird ones I didn't like, especially the "Home Page" icon. It sucks
    compared to the one in IE. It doesn't integrate with Windows; it's just another application for browsing websites,
    like that <a href="http://www.netscape.com">Netscape</a> thing my friend made me try a few years ago. That at least
    had an email client and other things included with it.</p>
<p>Firefox isn't worth the hassle: my favourite websites look "broken" and the thing is continuously complaining about
    plugins to view some pages. Some websites even tell me off now because I'm not using IE, in particular Microsoft,
    which doesn't let me update <a href="http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/thanks.asp?">anymore</a>. I switched
    back to IE after a few minutes of pointless struggle.</p>


<h3>Here's What You Get</h3>
<p>Firefox and IE are two very different things, and I didn't like that, but I admit I had some prejudices, maybe
    because of the fact that my friend told me to download something and said it was better, and it really wasn't. So I
    decided to give both him and Firefox a second chance, and I asked him to explain to me why Firefox is better than
    Internet Explorer.</p>
<p>The first thing he mentioned was the different terminology used by the two browsers, which can be summarized as
    follows:</p>
<table>
    <tr>
        <th>Internet Explorer</th>
        <th>Firefox</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Internet Options</td>
        <td>Options</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Temporary Internet Files</td>
        <td>Cache</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Favorites</td>
        <td>Bookmarks</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Address Bar</td>
        <td>Location Bar</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Refresh</td>
        <td>Reload</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Links Bar</td>
        <td>Bookmarks Toolbar</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Explorer Bar</td>
        <td>Sidebar</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Copy Shortcut</td>
        <td>Copy Link Location</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Save Target As</td>
        <td>Save Link As</td>
    </tr>
</table>
<p>and that once you get used to the new terms, finding what you're looking for is easier than in Internet Explorer.</p>


<p>My friend also said a new feature implemented by Firefox is <em>popup blocking</em>. So I told him that as of Service
    Pack 2, even Internet Explorer blocks popups (and before that, so did my Google Toolbar) but apparently Firefox had
    this feature long before Microsoft did. Good to know, but not really impressive.</p>
<p>What was more interesting was that Firefox lets you type in whatever you want in the Location bar, even if it's not a
    Web address, and you will still get the most relevant page available: for example, typing "firefox" takes me to <a
        href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/">http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/</a>. This is
    accomplished through Google's "<a href="http://www.google.com/help/features.html#lucky">I'm Feeling Lucky</a>"
    feature. IE doesn't do this: it gives me a search page for what I typed, or it tries to 'guess' the domain by adding
    a .com or .net after the word.</p>
<p>Firefox still didn't really impress me: some nice tricks, but nothing that would make me want to switch. What started
    to make the difference was the
<h3><em>Tabbed Browsing</em></h3> feature: I knew about it already, because IE started implementing that through the <a
    href="http://toolbar.msn.com/">MSN toolbar</a>, but it's a bit <a
    href="http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/008312.html">buggy</a>, so I didn't even try it. Firefox has had
this feature since its very first <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/0.1.html">release</a>, so I
guess it they represents a fully-functional, stable, and key feature of the browser. Tabbed browsing introduces a new
<em>philosophy</em> for browsing the web: there is only one browser window, but it can have multiple <em>tabs</em>, each
displaying a different page. You can switch from one tab to another by clicking on the title (tab titles appear
horizontally under the location bar), "Open Link in New Tab" by right-clicking on a link, and open empty tabs with
either CTRL+T or from the <em>File</em> menu. It takes a while to get used to it, but after a while I couldn't really
live without it!</p>
<p>I then asked my friend why Firefox doesn't allow me to play music or videos or read pdf files, etc., and he said that
    I needed to install all the necessary <a href="https://pfs.mozilla.org/plugins/">plugins</a>. This is the most
    annoying thing about Firefox: you have to "feed" it and "teach" it things - a lot like a baby, really. If the
    analogy is truly valid, in the end it should be worth it, and I have the feeling that my Firefox will grow up well,
    if I'm careful.</p>
<p>After learning about plugins, and teaching my little Firefox what to do with movies, songs and other types of files,
    I learnt that it had another really smart feature: outstanding, built-in <em>search capabilities</em>.</p>
<p>I had already noticed the small search bar on the top right, next to the location bar: it's basically a shortcut to
    Google Search. Cool, but I already had this in IE. One thing I didn't like about IE though, was that if I wanted to
    use a different search engine, like Yahoo or MSN, I had to install <em>another toolbar</em>, and I ended up with
    something like three different toolbars under the address bar, so I could hardly see the webpages I was browsing!
</p>
<p>Firefox apparently knows that people might need to use more than one search engine, so you can select other search
    engines by clicking on the little icon on the left of the aforementioned search bar. Yahoo, MSN, Wikipedia, and
    others are available, and <a href="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html">others</a> can be installed easily. If
    you need a plugin for a search engine, and it doesn't exist yet, you can even make it yourself quite <a
        href="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/generator/">easily</a>.</p>
<p>But let's come back a bit to when I ran Firefox for the first time: where did my IE Favourites go? Under the
    <em>Bookmarks</em> menu, obviously, and they even kept their folder structure. They can be organized through the
    <em>Manage Bookmarks</em> option, and indeed Firefox's <em>Bookmarks Manager</em>'s interface looks much cleaner and
    is easier to use than IE's. However, since all the imported bookmarks get dumped in a subfolder, it takes a little
    time to get them all up to the top level.
</p>
<p>Firefox also implements <em>Live Bookmarks</em>: some sites, especially news-related ones like <a
        href="http://news.yahoo.com/">Yahoo News</a> and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/">BBC News</a>, and <a
        href="http://slashdot.org/">Slashdot</a> offer <a
        href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29">RSS</a> feeds which are updated several times a day.
    With Firefox, you can <em>subscribe</em> to a particular site's RSS by clicking on the little square orange icon
    which appears on the status bar, and a <em>Live Bookmark</em> will be saved.</p>

<p>They appear under the <em>Bookmarks</em> menu, in a specific folder, and also on your <em>Bookmarks Toolbar</em>
    which is under the location bar: clicking on one of them will show the corresponding site's current headlines. You
    can click on any of the headlines to read the full story/article.</p>
<p>Even if my friend realised he just created another Firefox fan, he insisted on telling me a few words about Downloads
    and Options. Regarding Downloads, there's not much to say: Firefox incorporates a <em>Download Manager</em> that
    saves all files downloaded from the Net in a specific (selectable) folder, and keeps a history of all downloads. The
    download manager is opened automatically whenever a file is downloaded, and it also can be opened manually by
    selecting <em>Tools-Downloads</em>. The really handy part is that you can easily open a downloaded file or the
    folder it's in, or clear your download history all in one place. The drawback is that it stays open until you close
    it, and you have to click a button to clear the already downloaded files from the queue.</p>
<p><em>Options</em> is more complex to deal with, as Firefox does not rely on Windows' <em>Internet Options</em>.
    Firefox's Options (under the <em>Tools</em> menu) are more complete and better organized, as they are clearly
    divided into 5 main categories:</p>
<ul>
    <li><em>General</em><br />In this panel you can set up your starting page, fonts, colors, language, character
        encodings, whether or not Firefox is the default browser, and your connection settings.</li>
    <li><em>Privacy</em><br />Here - and this is really much better than in IE, I must admit - you can clear and manage
        history items, saved form information, saved passwords, download manager history, cookies and the browser cache.
        You can clear everything with a single click, but you'll lose all your saved passwords and your history lists.
    </li>
    <li><em>Web Features</em><br />This panel is for setting your preferences regarding popup blocking, software
        installation, images, Java and JavaScript.</li>
    <li><em>Downloads</em><br />Here you can choose your download destinatination folder as well as set other
        download-related preferences, like setting particular file types to save to a particular folder.</li>
    <li><em>Advanced</em><br />This panel is for - as the name implies - advanced preferences regarding accessibility,
        browsing, security, validation and certificates. You don't need to change anything here unless you've been told
        to or you know what you're doing.</li>
</ul>
<p><em>Is That All?</em><br />That's what I thought, and although I was really impressed with Firefox, I was still
    missing some features that IE had, such as third party toolbars. My friend was about to go, but he quickly opened a
    pre-defined firefox bookmark: <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/">Mozilla Update</a>. "Now you know how Firefox
    works: I'm sure you can work this out by yourself," he said, and left me with a door to another vast world to
    explore. The journey was far from over.</p>


<h3>Extensions and Themes</h3>
<p>One aspect of Firefox that was a bit discouraging was the fact that once you install the browser you need to install
    this, download that, and configure the other thing. For any IE user (like me), this is a major hassle: before, I
    just wanted to browse the Net, and I didn't care what I was using or how I was using it. Now, I have to be aware of
    certain things, and more or less <strong>create</strong> the browser I need! On the other hand, this is sort of
    exciting, in the sense that unlike IE, Firefox can became whatever you want it to be.</p>
<p>Even after using Firefox for a while, and even after my friend had explained all its nice features, I still felt that
    it was somehow incomplete. Luckily, Firefox has <em>extensions</em> and <em>themes</em>. The numerous extensions
    enhance Firefox by adding new features which - honestly - I never thought were even conceivable to be included in a
    browser. Furthermore, Firefox also has themes, so you can change the browser into something completely different,
    with different icons, shapes and colors!</p>
<p>It's worth it to mention some <em><strong>Extensions</strong></em> which really impressed me by the functionality or
    behaviours they added to Firefox:</p>
<ul>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=10&application=firefox">Adblock</a><br />This
        extension blocks ads - if you don't want to see a banner on a certain site anymore, just right-click on it,
        select AdBlock, and it's gone! It also remembers your preferences for every URL or site. It's easily
        customizeable and useful.</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=158&application=firefox">Tabbrowser
            Preferences</a><br />This adds a new category in your Options called Tabbed Browsing, where you can
        customize particular behaviours concerning tabs, like opening all addresses typed in the location bar in a new
        tab (focused or unfocused), forcing links to open in new tabs instead of new windows, and so on.</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=220&application=firefox">FlashGot</a><br />I
        complained before that my download manager wasn't integrated with Firefox: this extension does that, and
        supports nearly every possible download manager and accelerators. It also has a built-in gallery to quickly see
        what file types you are downloading.</li>
    <li><a
            href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=743&application=firefox">CustomizeGoogle</a><br />This
        personalises Google-related sites and services, such as using <a
            href="http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en">Google Suggest</a> in every search, filtering content
        and ads, anonymizing data transmitted to Google, and much more.</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=398&application=firefox">ForeCastFox</a><br />Get
        weather forecasts from all over the world displayed directly on your status bar or anywhere you want.</li>
    <li><a
            href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Developer%20Tools&numpg=10&id=60">Developer
            Tools</a><br />This is THE ultimate solution if you are a web developer or interested in knowing more about
        webpages. With this extension you can:<br />- Disable <strong>anything</strong> with a single click (images,
        JavaScript, cookies, colors, animations, etc.)<br />- Get CSS information or modify a page's CSS<br />- Have fun
        with Forms (convert POSTs to GETs, show hidden fields, and so on)<br />- Perform image-related operations: show
        paths, attributes, outline particular images, etc.<br />- Get infos about various elements on a page<br />-
        Clear history, cookies, open java console, view document's source<br />- Outline particular elements (images,
        tables, etc.)<br />- Resize your browser to a custom or predefined resolution<br />- Validate a page (HTML, CSS,
        WAI accessibility, speed reports)</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=33">Googlebar</a><br />Clone of the IE Google
        Toolbar.</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=270">Yahoo Companion</a><br />Clone of the IE
        Yahoo toolbar.</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=219">FoxyTunes</a><br />Control your favourite
        media player (several programs supported) directly from Firefox!</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=16">ChatZilla</a><br />A complete, fully
        functional, easy-to-use IRC client which runs from Firefox.</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=684">FireFTP</a><br />Fully integrated FTP
        client.</li>
</ul>
<p>There are actually many more extensions available from either the Firefox website or other portals which can be very
    useful, depending on your needs, but there are also <strong>Themes</strong> which can change Firefox's look and feel
    completely, such as:</p>
<ul>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?id=7&application=firefox">Qute</a><br />This theme
        inspired Firefox default theme: "Icons designed to be modern, dynamic and fresh, with attention paid to
        usability and comfort over extended use".</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?id=101&application=firefox">Silverskin</a><br />"Your
        favourite browser with a silver skin (With the Qute icons by Arvid Axelsson)"</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Popular&numpg=10&id=414">Saferfox
            Xpanded</a><br />"A full skin theme with a modern aqua design"</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Popular&numpg=10&id=213">Plastikfox
            Crystal SVG</a><br />"Plastik style from KDE with Crystal SVG icons"</li>
    <li><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Popular&numpg=10&id=72">Noia
            (eXtreme)</a><br />"This theme is based on the Noia2.0 icon set by Carlitus."</li>
    <li><a
            href="https://addons.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Popular&numpg=10&id=548">Brushed</a>"A
        Brushed and Polished Browser Interface."<br /><br />Again, many more themes are available. There's something for
        everyone, really!</li>
</ul>

<h3>To switch or not to switch?</h3>
<p>Yes, OK, it's not one of those questions which will keep you up at night, but for sure it can be a quandary.
    Personally, I decided to switch to Firefox gradually, while still viewing some sites in IE, because I think this can
    be a good compromise. The biggest problem is that even if Firefox supports Web standards (my friend said IE doesn't)
    some sites do not. Especially before Firefox, web developers apparently had to create their sites to be viewed
    correctly with Microsoft's browser. That's why some sites still have things like "This site is best viewed in
    Internet Explorer 6", or even, in some cases, they'll suggest you download the latest IE version, because <em>your
        browser is incompatible</em> when actually it's <em>the site</em> which is not compatible with [Web Standards].
</p>
<p>Furthermore, [ActiveX] is a non-standardized proprietary technology which Microsoft uses to make software components
    communicate and also provide complex functionalities necessary for things like Windows Update. Firefox doesn't
    support ActiveX, which has been exploited many times in the past (and still now): tough luck. Nowadays, Microsoft
    wants you to have Automatic Updates turned on, so you don't need to visit the Windows Update site anymore. As far as
    I'm concerned, I'm not too bothered by that, but if someday I need ActiveX technology, there's already a [Mozilla
    Project] on it. Final note: If you need to switch back to IE for some reason, the [IE View] extension can quickly
    give you the opportunity to do so, opening IE to view the page you're visiting.</p>
<p>It looks like the Browser Wars have started again, and as a matter of fact, Firefox is becoming known for its
    features, innovations and [community support]. Switching can be scary, and people can try forcing you to do it, but
    you shouldn't listen to them: don't start using Firefox just because "it's cool" or "everybody uses it"; try it
    first, understand how it works, and spend time learning it, because it just might be worth it.</p>
<p>One thing is certain: The existence of IE lovers is debatable, but there are over [170 million] Firefox lovers. Go
    [get it]!</p>